


eyes in the dead still water

by elliptical



Series: unbecoming jordan hennessy [7]
Category: Dreamer Trilogy - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Hennessy Is Her Own Content Warning, Murder, Psychological Horror, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:41:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28059372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: The barrel of the gun jabbed into the back of her skull.  Hennessy wasn’t kind about it.  It was half a blow, an impact forceful enough to snap Jay’s chin forward.  Her teeth slammed together. Sudden pain crackled through her jaw; maybe she’d split a molar.“Tell me what you know about my mother,” Hennessy said calmly.
Series: unbecoming jordan hennessy [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2052732
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	eyes in the dead still water

The seventh copy understood the situation immediately.

She didn’t recall the dream that had birthed her, but she didn’t need to. She knew that she’d formed inside a dream, and that spiteful hands had dragged her into the roughened waking world, and that now she would never dream again. She knew the identity of the person pressed against her back, the legs tangled through her own, the arms locked around her ribs. Revulsion pulsed through her, a pang so powerful that she gagged, and gagged again - helpless dry retching. She’d never eaten, so her stomach had nothing to puke. The wavy nausea dizzied her, unstable and disorienting, even though her limbs splayed across a level patch of floor.

“Shit,” said a voice from somewhere above.

The copy wrenched herself free of Hennessy’s arms, heedless of the way Hennessy’s wrist snapped with the force. After all, even if the movement hurt, Hennessy couldn’t protest. She couldn’t even scream like this. There’d never be a better opportunity; the copy existed for a single purpose. She turned, lifted her hand, angled the potential blow toward Hennessy’s throat - and someone caught her elbow from behind.

She froze, every muscle locking into place.

“Here, easy, easy, it’s okay,” the someone said, low and soothing. As though she was a frightened animal. As though she needed gentling. A glass pressed against her lips. She lashed out, hard, and the glass went flying. A shattering tinkle informed the girl of its demise. She refused to tear her gaze from Hennessy to eye the mess. A quick glance around would tell her the shape of the room and the number of people inside. 

She made no attempt to orient herself.

“Shit, fuck” - and then multiple pairs of hands restrained her, pushed her down, pressed her shoulders to the ground. “ _Get it together,_ shit, you’re _fine._ ”

She knew she was fine. That was part of the problem.

In her mind, she opened her mouth and screamed and screamed and screamed. She screamed until the walls peeled away and the sun flickered out and the galaxy was swallowed by a black hole. She screamed without drawing breath, without needing lungs, on and on and on and on. Everyone who heard the cry fell to their knees and clutched at their heads and wept. Nobody could stifle the noise. She became the subject of a rotting painting, _The Silenced Woman._ A classic cautionary tale. This monstrous figure might never have caused all the bleeding eardrums and imploded skulls and apocalyptic destruction, if only the people hadn’t taped her mouth shut.

The girl’s body was not her mind. The scream rang against her skull, incessant, earsplitting, but none of the others heard. They only listened to the sounds her throat made. So she made her throat quiet. She went limp. She pressed her forehead to the cool floor.

As expected, the pressure lifted. She sat up, slowly, lest sudden movements startle her captors. The room was cavernous, windowless, accented with marble and velvet and satin and dead animals. She and Hennessy had slept on the floor, apparently ignoring a perfectly good chaise. When she tipped her head back, she stared into a sea of identical faces.

The other copies told her the score. She pretended that she didn’t know already - she didn’t think she was supposed to. She made appropriate pained and confused noises, and she rasped the occasional soft question, and by the time she’d weathered their exposition, Hennessy had vanished.

The girl hadn’t seen her leave. She hadn’t been paying close enough attention.

“I need Hennessy,” the copy rasped, the first non-question to leave her lips. Her throat was so dry. She was beginning to regret throwing away the water glass, but she wasn’t yet desperate enough to beg for a drink.

Jordan brought her to Hennessy’s room.

Well, the room that they’d claimed for Hennessy’s recovery. Hennessy had no real bedroom, because Hennessy did not sleep.

Except when she did.

Hennessy lay on a wide expanse of mattress, her eyelids fluttering, a dreamer in repose. She’d make a lovely art piece, if the artist ignored the blood on her neck. A lovelier piece, perhaps, if the artist emphasized the blood and the pallor and the parted lips and the glimmering sweat and the acrid black ooze. Illness could be the most romantic thing in the world so long as you never suffered the stench.

Hennessy’s hands had ripped the girl from the dream like a murderer holding their victim underwater. The decision had been conscious. She’d inflicted this existence upon the copy, consigned her to a slow collapse - just like she’d done to every previous girl. 

Now those killer’s hands rested on her chest, folded and useless, thumbs anxiously rubbing against each other. One singular sign of consciousness.

Hennessy was not asleep. The copy knew this. She would have known this even if she hadn’t seen the restless motion.

“Heloise?” Jordan murmured, gentle, as if Hennessy deserved the comfort. “The new girl’s here. To see you.”

Hennessy didn’t open her eyes. Her lips barely moved, her words a soft breath. The girl had to climb onto the mattress to hear. “You’ll need to choose a name,” she breathed. “Lots of good websites for that. Baby name books. Fuck if it matters.”

“I already have a name,” the copy said.

Now Hennessy’s eyes did open. They gleamed with interest, keen and assessing. The sclerae were bloodshot and fever-glazed, although that wasn’t Hennessy’s fault. If she’d leveled a clear gaze, she’d be an impostor. 

“Oh?” Hennessy said.

“It’s Jay,” Jay said.

Hennessy _reacted._

That was the most satisfying bit, the reaction. Her hand jerked like she’d touched something putrid, her mouth twisting into a grimace, jaw clenching, nostrils flaring. Her teeth ground, audibly, hundreds of pounds of concrete pressure. She pushed herself up, heedless of her fragility, and then she croaked with pain. Jordan grabbed her arm. Hennessy leaned against her. Her breath was ragged, like she’d just won a fight, and her fever-ravaged eyes narrowed into malevolent slits.

“I don’t think-” Jordan began.

“No,” Hennessy snarled. _There_ was her voice, her real voice, a far cry from her wasted post-dream whisper. “Pick another name.”

“Wish I could, bruv,” Jay said, and grinned as Jordan flinched. “Wish I could.”

Shouting occurred, most of it Hennessy’s. Laughter occurred, most of it Jay’s. Desperate mediation occurred, all of it Jordan’s. When the diplomatic approach failed, Jordan banned Jay from Hennessy’s room altogether. Hennessy had lost her voice by then. It was clear that Jordan thought the stress might kill her. No matter. Jay had already delivered the most important message. 

_I know, bitch. I know._

She knew about the blood staining Hennessy’s hands. She knew about the dead girls, forever fucked, forgotten by the world and by Hennessy herself. She knew about how Hennessy repeated the cycle, creating and refining and destroying her hellspawn over and over and over, a generational curse flipped sideways. She knew that nothing would alleviate their collective misery except a bullet lodged in Hennessy’s skull. She knew that Hennessy wanted the bullet, craved the bullet, begged for the bullet. She knew that Hennessy was too cowardly to kill herself. She knew that the scream echoing inside her mind was a mirrored gift from Hennessy herself - the horror of a girl who’d spent years muzzled, exhausted, aching, alone, tortured, helpless. Helpless, helpless. Always fucking helpless.

She knew that their mother had passed on this killing magic along with a much more mundane illness. She knew that the two conditions fed on each other, poisonous entropy, terminal depletion. She knew that Hennessy couldn’t stop dreaming unless someone stopped her. She knew that the copies would never experience true joy, because their roots all snaked back to Hennessy’s rot; she knew that diseased plants needed to be uprooted before they infected entire gardens.

Parasites, all of them. Mistakes, all of them. Repulsive, all of them. Jay hated Hennessy for what she’d done, yes, but she also understood: Hennessy had been offered no survivable choice. Hennessy avoided sleep to postpone her curse, and she tore herself open in the process, and she screamed in places where no one would hear. That was noble, almost. Better than the most selfish course by far.

The true unforgivable sin was this: There had always been an unsurvivable choice. Dreams or death. A simple, one-step solution. Oblivion, dissolution, escape. A release from her obligations. Alive, Hennessy was only capable of destruction. She understood that. Jay understood it, too.

What Hennessy had done was heinous. What she _hadn’t_ was unforgivable.

Jay had little interest in befriending the girls, and they appeared content to avoid her. She suspected that Jordan’s unease trickled through the whole group, a miasma that tainted her friendship potential.

So she was sitting alone on swimming pool’s ladder, dangling her legs into the water, when she heard the click. 

Sneaky. Bold. A small smile crept across her face. “That was good,” she said. “I didn’t hear a thing.”

The barrel of the gun jabbed into the back of her skull. Hennessy wasn’t kind about it. It was half a blow, an impact forceful enough to snap Jay’s chin forward. Her teeth slammed together. Sudden pain crackled through her jaw; maybe she’d split a molar.

“Tell me what you know about my mother,” Hennessy said calmly.

“ _Our_ mother,” Jay corrected, matching the calm. Like hell was she going to betray the toothache. “Nothing you don’t. But imagine. You have all the answers, all the solutions, everything she gave you, and you choose _this._ Worst possible scenario for all involved parties. Stupidest, too. That’s the saddest part.”

“Tell me what you know about the dream.”

“It’s a breeding ground for all your playmates,” Jay said, and laughed. “Can’t abide the solitude, I expect. If you _must_ destroy something, might as well be yourself. How _do_ you live with the dissonance? We’re you, so hurting us hurts you alone. No one can fault you for the self-destruction; you’ve wronged nobody. And yet we’re autonomous, our own self-sufficient people, so killing yourself impacts innocent lives. Get it together, bitch. We are you, or we aren’t. You need to choose a side.”

Hennessy laughed, too. It was a ragged, wild sound. “You don’t know shit.”

“I don’t?” Jay turned around, slow, lest Hennessy startle and squeeze the trigger. She swung her legs onto the porch and faced Hennessy fully. She held up her hands, palms out, surrender. She tilted her head back. She smiled. 

The gun was a heavy silver number that Jay thought might have belonged to the original J.H. Hennessy. Fitting. If only her namesake had staged a proper murder-suicide, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

“You understand the trouble,” she said. “If we’re autonomous individuals, then of course you must survive. But if we’re autonomous individuals, then you’ve already fucked us.”

She tilted her head. “On the other hand,” she continued, “if we’re extensions of yourself, then there’s nothing stopping you from putting that barrel in your mouth and pulling the trigger. You won’t hurt anyone except yourself.”

Hennessy’s mouth worked, her eyes shadowed and resentful, as though she wanted to argue but couldn’t form a rebuttal.

“I know you want out,” Jay murmured, slipping into a low croon, the coaxing voice Hennessy often used on a mark. Hennessy would recognize the play, but that was part of the point. “I know we’re all doomed. I know you can’t save us. I know you’re buying time. I know you’ll keep sculpting copies until the clay runs out. I know you’ll kill us all.”

She allowed Hennessy to absorb this, then concluded, “I know we can’t live like real people. Neither can you. I know _you_ know that. It’s all right, Hennessy. We know. It’s all right. No one will be angry with you.”

Hennessy’s arm trembled. She removed her finger from the trigger, but Jay wasn’t sure whether that was because of the unsteadiness or because she was thinking it over. The most important aspect of this conman’s voice was that it offered comfort, guidance, support. All things that Hennessy craved like an addict on the third day of withdrawal. 

Jay watched Hennessy’s eyelids flutter. She swayed slightly, caught herself, straightened her spine, repositioned her grip. 

Hennessy wanted nothing more than someone kind, someone who’d absolve her sins and lay her down and sing her to dreamless sleep.

They were all so damn tired.

“I know you want to rest, Hennessy,” Jay said, gentle, like a mother. It wasn’t too late for her to make the right choice, even if she had committed unforgivable sins. “Don’t you want to sleep?”

A low, hitching sob bubbled in Hennessy’s throat. She sniffed, hard, and swiped at her eyes with her free hand. A single halting step backward, a shuddering sigh, and - she lowered the gun.

“That’s it,” Jay murmured, “that’s it, that’s good.” She remained where she was, hands still raised in surrender, while her mind assessed potential openings. “That’s perfect. Let me take care of you, sweetheart. I’ll take care of everything. Give me the gun.”

Hennessy shook her head hard. She stumbled back another step, half-tripped, righted herself.

“Give me the gun,” Jay repeated, just as gentle, just as coaxing. “It’s all right. I promise it’s all right. Let me help you sleep. You want a real sleep, right? You deserve to sleep.”

Hennessy kept her grip on the firearm. But she edged closer, turning toward the porch railing; Jay viewed her in profile. The railing ran all the way to the edge of the ladder, close enough to touch. Hennessy balanced the gun on the top edge. Her fingers were still curled around the handle, but the grip was loose. All she needed to do was let go, step back, and then Jay would be able to lunge.

Hennessy lowered her head, her eyes closed, lashes casting sunlit shadows against her cheeks. “You’re wrong,” she rasped.

Jay tilted her head. “About?”

“I don’t deserve to sleep.”

Jay’s lip curled, cruel, vindictive. “But you _want_ to. You want to, don’t you? It’s killing you, all that fucking want. It’s eating you alive. It’s eating _me_ alive.”

Hennessy swallowed. Jay watched the movement of her throat.

“If they’re good enough to live,” Hennessy croaked, “then I don’t deserve to sleep. That reasoning adheres to your little logic puzzle, I believe.”

“They _aren’t_ good enough.”

“They might be.”

This, for some reason, irritated Jay. When she spoke, her voice sounded much more like Hennessy’s than a conman’s. “They’re broken, asshole. _I’m_ broken. You’ve _seen_ what happens to us. You’ve seen what you fucking _did_ to us. Have some decency. Let us rest. Let your broken fucking playthings rest.”

Hennessy swallowed again.

“You want it,” Jay pressed, “and they do, too. I know you want it. I can hear you screaming. It’s all inside my head, recorded on an HD fucking loop - thanks for the constant low-level migraine, by the way. Look at me. Look at me, Hennessy. Am I you? Are we looking in the mirror? When have we ever _not_ taken what we want?”

Hennessy’s shoulders shook. Her fingers curled around the railing, beside the gun. She sniffled again. Her knees buckled. Jay could picture the impending submission, clear as a memory - Hennessy’s knees would fold, and she’d crawl forward, and she’d press the barrel into Jay’s hand. Jay would pull her close. She’d stroke Hennessy’s hair and help her relax and shush her softly, and she’d press the barrel to the back of her head, and she’d tear her mirror-brain to shreds, and she’d sleep. God, she’d sleep.

 _When have we ever_ not _taken what we want?_ Never. Hennessy never had the strength to abstain.

Then Hennessy whispered, “Every single fucking day.”

And she pushed Jay into the water.


End file.
